Saturday, August 11, 2012

The Who Sell Out was originally released as Track 612 002 (mono), 613002 (stereo) on December 15th, 1967. It reached #13 in the U.K. Released in the U.S. as Decca DL 4950 (mono), DL 74950 (stereo), it reached #48.

[The concept for The Who Sell Out came from Pete and Who manager Chris Stamp. Stamp tried to interest advertisers in paying for the adverts inserted by The Who on the record but, with only 50,000 copies of the album expected to be printed, none of the companies would buy. The U.S. LP hit the Billboard charts on January 6th. It was undoubtedly released prior to that date, maybe as early as the last week of December 1967.

The stereo mix was completed at De Lane Lea Studios, London, on October 30. The mono master was completed at the same studio November 2nd. The mono "Our Love Was" track has a different guitar part from the stereo and features a "flanging" effect throughout. "Odorono" lost its guitar part, "Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand," "Tattoo" and "Relax" have slightly different mixes and the bass was more prominent throughout. This mix was released on SHM-CD in Japan in 2009.

The Who Sell Out is the third album by the English rock band The Who, released in 1967. It is a concept album, formatted as a collection of unrelated songs interspersed with faux commercials and public service announcements. The album purports to be a broadcast by pirate radio station Radio London (Radio London being a famed "pirate" radio station of the era - so called because it literally transmitted from a ship floating in international waters to get around broadcasting restrictions!).

Part of the intended irony of the title was that The Who were actually making commercials during that period of their career, some of which are included as bonus tracks on the remastered CD. The album's release was reportedly followed by a bevy of lawsuits due to the mention of real-world commercial interests in the faux commercials and on the album covers, and by the makers of the real jingles (Radio London jingles), who claimed The Who used them without permission. (The jingles were produced by PAMS Productions of Dallas, Texas, which created thousands of station ID jingles in the 1960s and 1970s.) In 2003, the album was ranked number 113 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

by Adamus67

Tracks

Disc 1

1. Armenia City In The Sky (John Keen) - 3:51

2. Heinz Baked Beans (John Entwistle) - 1:00

3. Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand - 2:34

4. Odorono - 2:35

5. Tattoo - 2:54

6. Our Love Was - 3:25

7. I Can See For Miles - 4:05

8. I Cant Reach You - 3:31

9. Medac - 0:57

10. Relax - 2:38

11. Silas Stingy - 3:04

12. Sunrise - 3:03

13. Real (1 & 2) - 5:39

14. Real Naive - 0:59

15. Someone's Coming (John Entwistle) - 2:36

16. Early Morning Cold Taxi (Roger Daltrey, Dave Langston) - 2:59

17. Jaguar - 2:58

18. Coke After Coke - 1:05

19. Glittering Girl - 3:00

20. Summertime Blues (Eddie Cochran, Jerry Capehart) - 2:35

21. John Mason Cars (Entwistle, Moon) - 0:39

22. Girls Eyes (Moon) - 2:52

23. Sodding About (Entwistle, Moon, Townshend) - 2:47

24. Premier Drums (Full Version) - 0:42

25. Odorono (Final Chorus) - 0:24

26. Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand (US Mirasound Version) - 3:22

27. Things Go Better With Coke - 0:30

28. In The Hall Of The Mountain King (Grieg, arranged by the Who) - 4:23

With three full-time electric guitarists, a piano player and a fireplug of a lead singer who looks like Robert Blake's Baretta in a hippie disguise, Georgia's Lynyrd Skynyrd presents an unusually broad front line. And the band's live grand finale ("Our tribute to Du-ane"), the relentlessly ascending "Free Bird," is rock & roll at its most classically enveloping — a must see. On record, Skynyrd, with the aid of producer Al Kooper, approximates its hot live sound by limiting overdubbed extras (with three guitars and a keyboard, overdubbed parts are hardly necessary) and — partly through extensive room miking — by enclosing the band in a natural ambience.

Nuthin' Fancy maintains the feel, sonically and stylistically, of the first two albums but much of it seems stiff next to its direct predecessor, the tough but neighborly Second Helping. Singer Ronnie Van Zant's lyrics, so lucid and sly on the last album (especially in "Workin' for MCA" and "Sweet Home Alabama") are now sometimes hackneyed ("Railroad Song") or heavy-handed ("Saturday Night Special"). And the playing on a good half of the album sounds studiedly awkward compared to live renditions of the same songs. In particular, new drummer Artimus Pyle comes across much stronger onstage than on the record.

But there are some specific grabbers to make up for the problem areas. "On the Hunt," dominated by Gary Rossington's whip-snap guitar work, crackles with the dark eroticism of Free (Kooper cites that band as a favorite of Skynyrd's) and is as good as anything the group has put on record; "Cheatin' Woman" works, if not as a serious angry song, at least as an accurate Gregg Allman sendup, with Van Zant doing the vocal slurs and Kooper supplying the organ line; Rossington and Ed King give the second half of "Saturday Night Special" an exciting power assist; and "Am I Losin'" features Van Zant's most personal writing and singing (Van Zant's lyric writing may be erratic but his vocals are always on target).